February 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 22, 1775).

“Self-defence against unjust attacks needs no apology.”

It was the final volley in the battle over competing editions of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense that took place in newspapers advertisements in Philadelphia over a course of a month in late January and most of February 1776.  The author and Robert Bell, the publisher of the first edition, had a parting of the ways over Bell’s bookkeeping for the first edition.  Paine claimed that he wished to donate his share of the proceeds to purchase mittens for American soldiers participating in the invasion of Canada, but Bell somehow had not turned a profit.  That prompted Paine to work with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, on an expanded edition.  Bell published an unauthorized second edition.  Paine, who remained anonymous at that point, and Bell attacked each other in newspaper advertisements.  The author walked away, but Bell continued and the Bradfords joined the fray.  When Aitken learned that the Bradfords’ edition would feature new material, he published his own “ADDITIONS to Common Sense.”  The Bradfords warned that Bell’s new pamphlet “consists of Pieces taken out of News Papers, and not written by the Author of COMMON SENSE.”  Several newspapers carried some of these advertisements; the Pennsylvania Evening Post carried all of them.  Printed three times a week instead of just once (in contrast to the other newspapers published in Philadelphia at t the time), the Pennsylvania Evening Post allowed the feuding printers to publish speedy responses to the latest accusations leveled against them.

Bell inserted the last of those responses in the February 22 edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post and the February 26 edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet.  In Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense with an Account of Its Publication, Richard Gimbel notes that Bell “thought so much of this address that he had it separately printed as a two-page leaflet and added it, as an integral part, to his ‘complete’ edition of Common Sense.”[1]  In this advertisement, Bell presented himself as a performing his civic dry as a “Bookseller, to the Public.”  He entitled this new address, “Self-defence against unjust attacks needs no apology.”  He then disparaged Paine, the “envious Mr. ANONYMOUS,” for wanting to have all the attention for writing Common Sense when other authors, “worthy and respectables citizens of Philadelphia,” also penned “excellent pieces.”  Furthermore, “in the opinion of some gentlemen, who are good judges of literary merit,” those essays were “worthy of preservation, in such manner as to bind with other pamphlets in an octavo volume.”  Why should readers limit themselves to Common Sense alone when they considered current events when they could instead consult an entire compendium of essays that supported the American cause?  Paine, his intermediaries who negotiated with Bell, and the printers who worked with him attempted to “insinuate,” according to Bell, that there is no WRITERS in America but the would-be-author of Common Sense.”  Yet Paine had been influenced by others, so any acclaim he received amounted to nothing more than “stolen applause.”  In addition, the publisher framed the production and, especially, the dissemination of Common Sense as his work.  After all, Paine did not attach his name to the pamphlet and most printers initially did not want to be associated with such a revolutionary tract, but Bell “printed his name on the title of the flaming production, to sound the depths of the multitude for a virtuous and glorious independency.”  “Mr. ANONYMOUS” wrote the pamphlet, but it was Bell who deserved credit for presenting it to the world.  He concluded by proclaiming that he “continueth to sell to all who are capable of making proper distinctions, the large edition of Common Sense with ALL the additions and improvements.”  That volume included “the appendix, and address to the Quakers COMPLETE,” pieces written by Bell for the Bradfords’ expanded edition and pirated by Bell.  Gimbel contends that this “acrimonious quarrel” in newspaper advertisements “doubtless helped to make Paine’s Common Sense the most discussed and most widely circulated pamphlet in America.”[2]  Then, as now, everyone loved a controversy.  The dispute gave readers all the more reason to check out the pamphlet.

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[1] Richard Gimbel, Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense with an Account of Its Publication (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 47.

[2] Gimbel, Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense, 49.

February 24

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 24, 1776).

“THE MODERN RIDING-MASTER … Adorned with sixteen neat engravings.”

When Robert Aitken “PUBLISHED, PRINTED and SOLD” an American edition of Philip Astley’s “THE MODERN RIDING-MASTER, or a KEY to the KNOWLEDGE of the HORSE and HORSEMANSHIP,” he placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  In marketing the manual, he emphasized Astley’s celebrity, identifying him as a “Riding-master, late of his Majesty’s royal light dragoons.”  Aitken also promised that the manual included “several necessary rules for young horsemen.”  To that end, he declared that The Modern Riding-Master “may be considered as an useful Vade-Mecum” or handbook “for gentlemen of every rank and profession, whether civil or military.”  As printers and booksellers often did in their advertisements, Aitken copied the section headings to provide an overview of the contents.  The manual began with “Necessary precautions in purchasing a horse” and attention “Of the bridle and saddle,” continued with “The art of riding, and reducing a horse to proper obedience,” and also covered how “To mount the horse; with a variety of directions for the training and better government of this useful animal” and “Necessary directions on a journey.”

Figure 6 from Philip Astley, The Modern Riding-Master (Philadelphia: Robert Aitken, 1776). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

In addition to these directions, the manual featured “sixteen neat engravings descriptive of this manly exercise.”  Aitken exaggerated a bit.  The handbook did indeed have sixteen illustrations, but they were woodcuts integrated into the text rather than copperplate engravings printed separately.  Those images “Adorned” the text, as Aitken stated, but they were not of the same quality as engravings.  Still, they provided useful visual aids for readers.  To draw the attention of prospective customers, Aitken submitted one of those woodcuts, Figure 6, to accompany his advertisement in the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  It depicted a rider placing his “left Foot in the Stirrup” as he prepared to mount a horse held steady by an attendant.  Aitken made savvy use of the woodcut, reusing it in an advertisement once he finished printing the manual.  It was the only visual image in his notice in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, a newspaper that did not even have a device in its masthead.  The woodcut gave a preview of what readers could expect if they purchased Astley’s manual.

Woodcuts in Philip Astley, The Modern Riding-Master (Philadelphia: Robert Aitken, 1776). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

Slavery Advertisements Published February 24, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Constitutional Gazette (February 24, 1776).

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Constitutional Gazette (February 24, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 24, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (February 24, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (February 24, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published February 24, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Constitutional Gazette (February 24, 1776).

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Providence Gazette (February 24, 1776).

February 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Connecticut Gazette (February 23, 1776).

“Sold by the Printer hereof … COMMON SENSE.”

On February 23, 1776, Timothy Green, the printer of the Connecticut Gazette, announced the publication of yet another local edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.  He joined other printers in publishing, advertising, and disseminating the incendiary political pamphlet far beyond Philadelphia, where Robert Bell published and advertised the first edition on January 9.  Since then, Bell produced an unauthorized second edition and Paine worked with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, on an expanded new edition (and they engaged in a public argument about the competing editions in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and other newspapers published in Philadelphia).  The Bradfords also informed readers that a German edition was in the works.  In addition, they indicated that they would fill an order from Virginia for one thousand copies.  It did not take long for William Green, a bookseller and bookbinder in New York, to advertise copies of Bell’s first and second editions.  John Anderson, the printer of the Constitutional Gazette in New York, soon marketed the first local edition published beyond Philadelphia.  By the middle of February, John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, advised readers that his local edition would hit the market within a week.

That edition went on sale at the same time that Green released a local edition in New London.  According to the advertisement, Judah P. Spooner, his brother-in-law and former apprentice who operated a printing office in Norwich, sold the pamphlet there as well.  The imprint on the title page suggested that Green and Spooner collaborated as publishers, but Spooner did the printing: “Philadelphia: Printed.  Norwich: Re-printed and sold by Judah P. Spooner, and by T. Green, in New-London.”  Green gave their advertisement a privileged place in the Connecticut Gazette, placing it immediately after updates from Hartford.  That made it difficult for readers to miss.  He did not, however, include elements that often appeared in advertisements for other editions in other newspapers, such as the list of section headers that outlined the contents or the epigraph from “Liberty,” a poem by James Thomson.  Lack of space may have prevented Green from publishing a more elaborate advertisement, though he may have considered the buzz around Common Sense sufficient to sell it once prospective customers knew where to purchase a local edition.

Slavery Advertisements Published February 23, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Gazette (February 23, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (February 23, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 23, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 23, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 23, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published February 23, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Gazette (February 23, 1776).

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Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (February 23, 1776).

February 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR:  Madison Sandusky

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 22, 1776).

“THE MILITARY GUIDE for YOUNG OFFICERS.  By THOMAS SIMES, Esq.”

Several printers in Philadelphia advertised “THE MILITARY GUIDE for YOUNG OFFICERS” by Thomas Simes in February 1776.  The manual was published in 1776 and contained a compilation of “works of several military authors, including Humphrey Bland and the comte de Saxe.”  When the American Revolution began in 1775, military manuals, such as the one Simes wrote, became popular among young men preparing to join the war and those who had already joined. According to the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, “to meet the demand for military texts, a flood of printings began to appear from the American presses.”  Additionally, the advertisement above, published in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, which was a newspaper located in Philadelphia, displays how that flood of printing was “centered in Philadelphia, where more than thirty works on military subjects were published in the years 1775 and 1776 alone.”  The advertisement briefly summarizes the book, stating that it included “the experience of many brave heroes in critical situations, for the use of young warriors” to entice the target audience of young men who would serve as officers to purchase the book as a helpful guide. The advertisement even noted that the guide came with its own “explanatory DICTIONARY,” a bonus section. One signer of the Declaration of Independence, William Floyd, owned a copy of Simes’s guide, which can be taken as an indicator of both the quality and popularity of its contents.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

Robert Bell, the publisher of the first edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, continued his feud with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, with a new advertisement in the February 22, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  Dissatisfied with Bell’s bookkeeping, Paine collaborated with the Bradfords on an expanded edition of his popular political pamphlet, yet Bell took an unauthorized second edition to press and simultaneously published diatribes about Paine and the Bradfords.  His latest advertisement would be the last in the series that attacked the author and his fellow printers.  It filled more than a column, starting on the third page of the February 22 issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post and overflowing onto the fourth page.  The advertisement for Thomas Simes’s Military Guide for Young Officers, jointly published by Bell, Robert Aitken, and James Humphreys, Jr., immediately followed Bell’s advertisement.  In the column to the right, the Bradfords promoted their “NEW EDITION of COMMON SENSE, With ADDITIONS and IMPROVEMENTS,” and warned that the “Pamphlet advertised by Robert Bell intitled ADDITIONS to COMMON SENSE … consists of Pieces taken out of News Papers, and not written by the Author of COMMON SENSE.”

The advertisement for Simes’s Military Guide for Young Officers thus appeared in the middle of the controversy over the publication of new editions of Common Sense.  Unlike Bell’s questionable decision to produce a second edition of the political pamphlet and then attempt to capitalize off it by publishing another pamphlet of “ADDITIONS” drawn from newspapers rather than written by Paine, he collaborated with Aitken and Humphreys in producing the military manual “at the desire of several Members of the Honorable the Continental Congress, and some of the Military Officers of the Association.”  Bell (along with Aitken and Humphreys) had the right endorsements for an American edition of a manual previously published in London and the printers attempted to leverage that in marketing Simes’s Military Guide for Young Officers to prospective customers who, as Madison notes, could choose from among many similar works published in Philadelphia at the time.  In the Pennsylvania Evening Post, the advertisement appeared in the middle of the various notices in the February 22 edition, but two days later it had a privileged place in the Pennsylvania Ledger.  Humphreys, the printer of that newspaper, placed the advertisement on the first page, making it the first item in the first column.  The printers of the Pennsylvania Gazette gave the advertisement the same treatment in the February 28 edition of their newspaper.  The flamboyant Bell took a more measured approach to marketing the military manual compared to some of the other books and pamphlets he printed and, especially, his new editions of Common Sense.  Perhaps his partners in the endeavor took the lead in marketing Simes’s Military Guide for Young Officers.

Slavery Advertisements Published February 22, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Maryland Gazette (February 22, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (February 22, 1776).

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New-York Journal (February 22, 1776).

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New-York Journal (February 22, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published February 22, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

New-York Journal (February 22, 1776).

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New-York Journal (February 22, 1776).

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New-York Journal (February 22, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 22, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 22, 1776).